Hartmut Hegeler
Hartmut Hegeler (born 11 June 1946 in Bremen) is a German Protestant pastor and author, who is committed to rehabilitating the victims of the witch hunts in Europe which reached a peak during the early seventeenth century. He has a homepage about Anton Praetorius.
Biography
[edit]Hegeler attended school in Bielefeld and was an exchange student in Senior High School in Renton, Washington in 1964. He studied theology in Germany in Bethel, at the university of Marburg and Heidelberg. As a vicar of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia he was in India. Here he made a survey of an irrigation project of the Tamilnad Christian Council by Joseph John and Lüder Lüers.[1] As pastor he served in Recklinghausen. 1974-1976 he worked in the field of development aid in North Yemen. 1976-1982 he was parish pastor in Dortmund, afterwards he worked as a pastor and religious education teacher in a vocational training college in Unna, North Rhine-Westphalia, where he lives. Since 2010 he is retired.
Questions of his students in 2001 about the persecution of witches were the impulse for his studies on this subject: writing books and holding lectures. He is fighting for the exoneration of the victims of the witchcraft trials, that they should be given back their dignity as human beings and as Christians. Places of remembrance should give witness to their fate. There have been many reports in the media about his activities.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
References
[edit]- ^ Tamilnad Christian Council: Milestone – three. Crop Loan Programme – Phase I – 1974 PDF; 509 KB Retrieved 14.05.2022
- ^ "Spiegel online: Accused of Dancing With the Devil". 16 December 2011. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
- ^ The Times. May 3 2019. David Crossland: German priest demands pardon for 25,000 executed ‘witches’
- ^ Irish Legal News Ltd. 7 May 2019: Retired pastor calls for pardons for witches executed in early modern Europe
- ^ Corriere della Sera. 5 maggio 2019. Paolo Valentino: LA STORIA. Katharina, Agnes e migliaia di altre: battaglia del pastore per le «streghe». Dopo cinque secoli, l’evangelico Hegeler contesta l’accusa di rapporti col diavolo.
- ^ Die Welt. 02.05.2019 Claudia Becker: Für die Opfer des Hexenwahns. Ex-Pfarrer Hartmut Hegeler bemüht sich um eine Rehabilitierung der Verfolgten. (Printversion Panorama S.23)
- ^ Český rozhlas. 12.05.2019 Německý farář žádá rehabilitaci pro desetitisíce upálených čarodějnic (Der deutsche Priester fordert die Rehabilitierung von Zehntausenden verbrannten Hexen)
- ^ Deutsche Welle. June 11th 2019 David Crossland: Germany: Cleric battles to exonerate innocent witches
- ^ Berlino Magazine. 14.06.2019 Marta Miotto: In Germania un prete vuole scagionare le streghe
Publications
[edit]- Literature by and about Hartmut Hegeler in the German National Library catalogue
- "Anton Pretorius" Homepage of Hegeler about witchcraft trials
- Hegeler in the lexicon of authors in Westphalia
- List of his publications in German
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